Pitching wort onto a cider cake?

I am using a 3056 Bavarian Wheat to make some apple cider... I'm feeling experimental. My plan is to leave a quart or so of cider in the primary, along with the yeast cake, and throw a half batch of Hefeweizen on it. Has anyone tried something like this? This might make for some "cidery off flavors," or it might be a super delicious fruitified Hefe... My main concern is that the yeasties are used to feasting on apple juice, not wort, and that I might get really poor attentuation.

Any thoughts or advice?

sounds yummy let us know how it turns out

What was the OG and FG of your cider and did you use a lot of added sugar in it? Also, how long did you ferment it?

I make a similar deal from scratch using wlp300 yeast, 2 gals of apple juice and about 1 gal of wort made from a mini mash of 2 row, crystal 10L and chocolate malt. It is a crowd pleaser.

So I say go for it and report back!

eddie said:

What was the OG and FG of your cider and did you use a lot of added sugar in it? Also, how long did you ferment it?

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OG was 1.050, and it is straight juice, I did not add any extras. Tomorrow it will be 7 days in the primary. Krausen has almost completely subsided, bubbling has slowed, so I will check the gravity in the coming days. Are you thinking that extra sugar would contribute more off flavors?

jayhuff said:

I make a similar deal from scratch using wlp300 yeast, 2 gals of apple juice and about 1 gal of wort made from a mini mash of 2 row, crystal 10L and chocolate malt. It is a crowd pleaser.

So I say go for it and report back!

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Cool! Glad to hear someone else has experimented with this idea... What's your brew like and what kind of kick does it have? I'll definitely report back with my recipe and the results when it's time.

Let us know how it turns out.

It has been said that yeast forget how to eat maltose when reproducing, thats why you don't use cane sugar as a starter. I would guess that it won't ferment wort very well, aka wouldn't finish to the gravity you are expecting.

Nablis said:

Let us know how it turns out.

It has been said that yeast forget how to eat maltose when reproducing, thats why you don't use cane sugar as a starter. I would guess that it won't ferment wort very well, aka wouldn't finish to the gravity you are expecting.

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I made apfelwein with 3068 and cane sugar. I pitched a hefe on the cake. Did NOT work out well at all, it fermented well at first but didn't get nearly as low as it should have... the beer is conditioning in bottles ATM but at bottling time it was incredibly sweet, hopefully it becomes drinkable.

Not sure if it was the higher gravity or the different sugars in the apfelwien that did it, but man I was PO'd.

kilgore, sorry to hear yours didn't work out. it is possible that the yeast were acclimated to the simpler sugars and got a shock when trying to ingest the wort.

i still think it will work with the right care. it may work better the other way around, tho (cider on hefeweizen cake)

keep us posted.

DeathBrewer said:

i still think it will work with the right care. it may work better the other way around, tho (cider on hefeweizen cake)

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That's definitely what I'm doing from here on out. I really like the apfelwein made with it, so hopefully that goes better... can't afford to kill off $6 of yeast every batch.

I've found that in order to use a yeast cake that was fermenting cider to accumulate back to malt, you need to wash the yeast (not that hard in juice, because the cake is almost all yeast) and get a starter going with some 1.040ish wort and use that once it's done fermenting. Although going the other way works great (I still wash the yeast and use a juice starter in that case though). In my experiments to find the perfect yeast to duplicate a dry english cider using store bought juice I've gotten in the habbit of making up a batch of cider along with my beer brew days using the yeast from the beer in the cider.

I have ended up postponing and modifying this experiment... I washed the yeast from the primary yesterday, and plan to still make a cider/hefe combo brew, but it won't be until later this week... I'll be sure to report on the results!

Thanks for all the input!